Posted on 02/16/2003 4:46:46 AM PST by knighthawk
Anti-terrorist officers are continuing to question a man caught with a live hand grenade in his luggage at Gatwick airport.
Venezuelan authorities have named the man as Rahaman Alan Hazil Mohammad, who has Venezuelan citizenship, says the BBC.
The head of the country's immigration service told the BBC the man, aged 40, was known to the Venezuelan authorities before his arrest.
He had reportedly visited a number of 'sensitive countries', although he refused to give further details.
Mohammad, currently in custody at high-security Paddington Green police station in west London, was arrested on Thursday after he flew in on a British Airways jet he had boarded in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.
Scotland Yard refused to confirm the suspect's name.
A spokesman said anti-terrorist officers are liaising with their counterparts in South America and would fly out if necessary.
The US Department of State has said Islamic extremist groups have long operated on Venezuela's Margarita Island, which is home to a large expatriate population from the Middle East, many of whom work in the oil industry.
High-profile security measures were launched on Tuesday with the dramatic deployment of armoured vehicles at Heathrow.
More than 400 soldiers and around 1,700 extra police officers were drafted in to the airport and other key London locations.
Hey, I don't want to jump to any conclusion here.
This guy may be a Chaldean Christian like Tariq Aziz!
Or, he may be like all those Iraqi's who were going to a wedding and all carried false passports.
Has anyone connected the dots? Is this why Venezuela is having trouble in their oil industry? DUH!!
The press thinks we're so stupid we haven't figured this out.
Further South, in what is known as the "Tri-Border Area" where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay converge, we see the long-standing presence of Islamic extremist organizations, primarily Hizballah and, to a lesser extent, the Sunni extremist groups al Gamaat (IG) and HAMAS.
These organizations are involved in fundraising activities and proselytizing among the large expatriate population from the Middle East that lives in the Tri-Border area and also on Venezuela’s Margarita Island. These organizations engage in document forgery, money laundering, contraband smuggling, and weapons and drug trafficking.
The size and nature of these groups may signal the existence of clandestine support cells that could be activated to conduct terrorist attacks anywhere in the region.
Hizballah is the prime suspect behind the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombings of the Argentine Israel Mutual Association (AMIA) community center. These attacks were characterized by the same faceless cowardice that we saw on September 11, and they remain unsolved to this day, although I am pleased that a trial in the 1994 bombing is now underway in Buenos Aires. We hope the perpetrators will at last be brought to justice.
I'm shocked...
My guess is an assassination attempt. I wonder what his itinerary was.
Nor Jezebel, Ahab, Judas etc.
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